The current state of residence, home and office automation is a stagnation and difficulties. At present time there is a growing need for energy saving, wherein electrical appliances need to be remotely operated and controlled, moreover lighting systems are in a period of interim change from incandescent light to fluorescent and to be replaced in the short term with LED illuminators and with other new lighting technologies of the future.
Despite all this, the many attempts to move ahead with home automation do not seem to be successful. The major difficulties involved with the electrical systems in premises and with the electrical and A/V appliances are far from being solved, the issues are:
Every manufacturer of electrical and A/V appliances uses an individually allotted address in its IR remote control signal for operating any of its appliances. This by itself prevents the use of a simple automation control standard for all currently produced appliances. It mandates custom designs and complicated integration and/or the introduction of universal remote controls, that are non friendly and are complicated to set and operate, and are one of the sources for frustration, incompatibility and operational errors.
Other limitations with IR remote control are the line of sight and control distance, wherein the practical limit for currently produced IR remote controls is 3 meters in line of sight, with a maximum control distance is between 5˜7 meters from the appliance. Most of known appliances will not respond to a command from 5 meters distance.
The strict electrical and building codes governing electrical switches and power outlets, the different voltages, frequencies, sockets and plugs that vary from one country or one region to another are the every reason to maintain old traditions and standards.
The approvals for electrical devices covering each and every electrical element and material are costly and time consuming.
It is prohibited to mingle the fundamental low voltage bus lines into the electrical system. Consumer A/V appliances are rarely provided with bus line control.
The many introductions of wireless RF control, attempted time and again, are too complicated to integrate into automation systems and repeatedly failed.
The control via the AC lines is troublesome and it offers no solution for the future, it is another failed concept as well.
IR is used for most of the appliances and must be included in residence automation, but as stated above, because of the non compatibility and the line of sight limitations, the IR is not trouble free.
To overcome such difficulties and problems and to move forward with residence, home, office, business, public and other premises automation the use of lightguide was introduced. The lightguide known as a Plastic Fiber Optic or POF is applied to AC devices for home automation as disclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 12/236,656 filed on Sep. 24, 2008, 12/725,808 filed on Mar. 17, 2010 and 12/761,484 filed on Apr. 16, 2010.
An improved IR control system for the home automation, with increased operational reliability via IR drivers with individual adjustments of the line of sight, by a plurality of IR transmitters and receivers were introduced and disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,639,907 and 7,649,727.
Other major obstacles impeding the automation systems for residence, home, offices, business and other work places or public premises are the lack of coding and addressing concept for the wiring devices and elements such as AC light switches and the AC outlets, plugs and sockets. The above explained incompatibility of the different signaling, commands, protocols and systems, including the inherent drawback with the unique addresses allotted to each individual manufacturer of A/V and electrical appliances and the manufacturers use of non compatible code for each of the functions. A coding and addressing concept that offer no benefit to the manufacturers.
To conclude, the unique IR addresses and the non compatible function codes should be abolished, or an interim new protocols and codes to enable simple integration of electrical appliances into home automation should be appended to all electrical and A/V appliances. Moreover a system to propagate addresses, optical commands, communication and control signals via lightguides or fiber optic cable in parallel, along with a simplified addressing and coding of the electrical wiring devices and elements, including the addressing of the premises interiors, are needed.